by Connie Mann
When the bear hesitated, Josh put his rifle to his shoulder just in case.
The silence lengthened while the bear made a decision. It looked over its shoulder at what had captured its attention, then back at Josh, and finally lumbered off into the forest.
Josh waited a bit, then headed toward whatever the bear had found. Though they were mainly vegetarians and loved berries, they were not above eating carrion for the protein, so Josh expected a dead animal, perhaps a deer or maybe a possum or a raccoon. He stopped, stared, and it took him a minute to process that he was seeing human remains instead.
He forced himself to take a deep breath and push his emotions aside. He scanned the body, noticing the bright orange hunter’s vest and the rifle clutched in the man’s hand. He’d have to check if it had been fired, if perhaps the hunter had tried to protect himself and that was what caused the bear to charge.
But first, he used his shoulder radio to call dispatch. “This is 413-Ocala, and I’ve got a code 7 at my location. Victim appears to have been mauled by a bear. Better call the biologist, too. Have him bring a bear trap. Bear is still in the area.”
“Are you safe, Tanner?”
“As far as I know. I chased him away so I could get close to the body.”
“Backup should be there in ten, Hollywood. Sit tight.”
“10-4, thank you.”
While he waited, Josh studied the body, one ear cocked for sounds of the bear, since it wouldn’t give up its food unless it had to. Flies were already present, but no maggots yet that he could see, so he didn’t think the man had been dead very long, but the medical examiner would determine time of death. Josh pulled on latex gloves and reached for the man’s rifle, sniffed. He checked the barrel. Fully loaded.
Next, he checked the pockets of the bright orange vest. No wallet, but he found a can of bear spray. If you had bear spray in your pocket and a rifle in your hand, why the hell wouldn’t you fight back? It made no sense.
The man’s vest also held a digital camera and a small notebook. No cell phone. Josh clicked through the photos, surprised to find nothing but pictures of the monkeys. Page after page of the notebook was filled with notes on monkey behavior, along with several references to locations.
He bagged the items and then forced himself to study what was left of the man’s face. He didn’t recognize him, which wasn’t surprising. He certainly didn’t know every hunter who roamed the six hundred thousand acres of the Ocala National Forest every year.
Before long, he heard approaching vehicles. FWC officers generally worked alone, but thanks to their computer-aided dispatch system, when he called in, every officer in the area had heard about it and would have headed in his direction.
Hunter Boudreau arrived first in his FWC F-150 pickup. He took one look at the body and muttered, “Holy crap, that’s a tough way to go.”
“I was thinking the same thing, but it’s weird. The guy had a rifle in his hand and bear spray in his pocket. Why did he let the bear get that close? And why aren’t there any defensive wounds?”
Hunter crouched beside the body and studied it as well as the surrounding area for several minutes, fairly vibrating with intensity. Josh could see him working his way down his mental checklist. “He have any ID on him?”
“Not that I’ve been able to find.”
Marco Sanchez, another FWC officer, reacted to the body with the same shock as both Josh and Hunter. “What the heck happened out here? We’ve never had a bear kill somebody.”
Hunter stood, nodded. “True. Let’s try to ID this guy so we can notify next of kin.”
Josh noticed a set of footprints leading away from the body and followed them into the tree line. As he walked back to the others, he held up a black object. “I found his wallet. Twenty-five dollars in cash, but no ID and no hunting license.” He raised a brow. “Can’t imagine the bear taking his driver’s license.” Josh hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “There are footprints leading away from the body. I’ll go see where they lead.”
Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe he was with a friend and his buddy escaped. But right now, that’s all speculation. Sanchez and I will wait for the medical examiner and the biologist and see what else we can find.”
Josh held up the evidence bags. “He also had a camera with nothing but pictures of the monkeys and a notebook filled with notes about them in his pocket.”
The three men looked at one another. “Is this guy another monkey researcher?” Sanchez asked.
They all remembered the female PhD student from the University of Florida who had been beaten severely last year and had eventually called off her research project due to death threats.
“Be careful, Hollywood,” Hunter added as Josh started tracking the footprints.
They were smaller than his own, so he figured whoever they belonged to wasn’t quite as tall as his own six feet.
He’d gone a quarter of a mile when the footprints ended abruptly. It took him a few minutes before he discovered a set of tire tracks several yards away. Someone had tried to erase their footprints. What were they hiding?
Resigned to a hot, sweaty walk, he followed the tracks as they headed into the sand, then looped back to the road several times, further raising his suspicions.
The trail ended in front of an aging green GMC Sierra, parked in front of an even older camper. As he studied the fresh coat of dark-green paint, he flashed back to Delilah’s paint-stained fingers, and his heart sank. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to disguise her presence. Dozens of questions and possibilities sprang to mind, but he refused to speculate.
He walked up the camper’s rickety metal step and knocked. No curtains twitched at the small windows on either side, but he kept his hand on his weapon in case she wasn’t alone. Besides enjoying their morning flirtation over coffee, he knew nothing about her personal life or living situation. “FWC. Open the door, please.”
No sound came from within, so he knocked again. “Officer Tanner. FWC. Open up, please. I need to ask you a few questions.”
Josh was ready to circle around back when the door eased open several inches. Delilah stood behind the partially open door, arms crossed over her chest, chin up at a defensive angle, both surprise and alarm in her expression. “Officer Tanner. What brings you all the way out here?” Her frosty tone suggested she was still ticked off about their earlier conversation.
He studied her a moment. Outwardly, she looked tough and intimidating, but then he glimpsed that flicker of worry again, the hint of vulnerability that always hit him like a one-two punch to the gut and tempted him to wrap her in his arms and tell her everything would be okay. There were deep currents in Delilah he wanted to explore, but right now, he needed answers. He kept his smile friendly, casual. “Hello, Delilah. May I come in?”
She nodded once, and he followed her into the tiny but immaculate camper and sat down across from her at the dinette. Their knees bumped, and he muttered “Sorry,” but his eyes never left her face.
Just as he opened his mouth to ask what she’d been doing near a dead body, she leaned forward, frustration—and a hint of confusion—in her gaze. “Your family runs an outfitter. You and I have talked about the monkeys. Now you’re telling Wells you support FWC removing them? What does that mean exactly? Have they hired a trapper?”
He held his hands up, palms out, and decided to roll with the conversation. He’d learned to let witnesses talk, get whatever was on their minds said, since they often told him what he needed to know without prompting. If not, he could always redirect. He also wanted to clear the air and reestablish the trust they had been building. “First of all, I wasn’t going to give Wells my personal opinion and have him quote it as an official FWC statement.”
She raised her brows and nodded, waiting.
“And second, nothing official has been decided. There is no timeline or management plan in
place, but after yesterday’s incident, I’m sure it’s coming.”
“Would you stop it if you could?”
He looked away, then back at her. “I don’t know. I tend to think we’d be better off without them.”
For an instant, she looked like he’d stabbed her in the heart, but then her temper flared. Dang, she was beautiful with her cheeks flushed and her blue eyes flashing.
“You said yourself most of the problems would resolve themselves if people quit feeding them.”
“I did. I also think they’re fun to watch, and I am well aware they bring money to the Outpost.” He sighed. “It’s complicated. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, does it?” The words popped out without warning, and he froze, waiting for her answer.
“No. Yes. Okay, maybe.” She huffed out a breath. “You’re making me crazy,” she muttered, but a smile escaped as she looked at him.
He grinned like an idiot but then sobered. What the hell are you doing, Tanner? He cleared his throat and turned the conversation to official business. “Tell me what happened in the forest today.”
Delilah’s faced paled, and wariness crept into her eyes. Her chin came up, and she asked, “What do you mean?”
He raised a brow, waited, but she said nothing. “I followed your trail from where we found a deceased individual. Who is he?”
Delilah squeezed her eyes shut as though blocking the image, then she shrugged and shook her head. When she looked up, her eyes were sad. “I don’t know.”
“Based on some evidence we found, it looks like he was here to study the monkeys, just like you. You haven’t run into him since you’ve been here?”
She shook her head no.
“Okay, walk me through it. Where did you go after you left the café?”
Delilah glanced away, and Josh couldn’t help admiring her profile. Between her high cheekbones and full lips, she really was beautiful, but he had the sense she didn’t realize it. Focus, Tanner.
She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear and tugged on it as though surprised at how short it was. “I rented a kayak and went to study the monkeys like I’d planned, and afterward, I tried to connect with some friends. But they weren’t where I thought they’d be.”
“You mean the Atwoods?”
Her eyes flew to his, then darted away again. “Yes. Do you know them?”
“I know their campsite used to be in that general vicinity. But they moved on a couple of months ago.”
“Do you know where they—” She cut herself off. “Never mind.”
He folded his arms and leaned on the table, trying to figure out what she wasn’t saying. “What happened after you got to the campsite?”
She stared down at the table, fiddled with a napkin. “Since it was obvious they weren’t there, I headed back to my truck. That’s when I came across the, uh, the dead man.”
“He was already dead when you got there?”
“Definitely, as far as I could tell. The smell was terrible. When I heard the bear, I backed up slowly and slipped into the trees.”
“What did the bear do? Did he see you?”
Delilah squeezed her eyes shut again as though to block the memory. Josh couldn’t blame her. “I don’t think so. When he leaned over the man, I took off.” She wrapped her arms tightly around her middle, and he couldn’t help noticing they were toned and tan. “That’s all I can tell you. Do you know who the man was?”
“Not yet.” Josh studied her body language and all the things she hadn’t said. “Why didn’t you report a body?”
She blanched and chewed her lower lip, and he ignored the flare of heat that shot through him.
“I was pretty rattled. I hadn’t quite worked my way up to it yet.”
* * *
Delilah forced herself to meet Josh’s questioning gaze as shame washed over her. For the sake of the dead man, she should have called immediately. She’d been so worried about what to say, she’d hesitated. That wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to be.
When he’d shown up, she’d thought he wanted to finish their earlier conversation about the monkeys. The fact that he was FWC and would logically be investigating a bear attack hadn’t even crossed her mind.
She took a slow, calming breath, then another, until her brain got a tight grip on her panic so she could think. She couldn’t tell him who she was. Certainly not while she was trying to get Mary away from her family. Her identity would raise questions that would only muddy the waters.
Her imagination was running away with her, and she was behaving like her paranoid father. A bear attacking a man near where her family was transferring guns and money had to be an unfortunate coincidence. But in Delilah’s experience, things were never quite that simple. Though for her, like for the dead man, they were often that sad.
Josh was watching her, eyes intense. “Are you okay?”
She nodded and bit her lip again. When his eyes tracked the movement, she became acutely aware that her nervous tell had become something else. The familiar zip of attraction flared in her belly, but she ignored it. Those green eyes of his missed nothing, and she couldn’t risk him looking too closely, probing too deeply. She should have remembered John Henry’s number one rule: keep to yourself.
“I’m sorry. Seeing him really threw me. But I should have called someone.” She’d been equally shaken by seeing her brother. And father. And having them aim guns in her direction. She couldn’t conceal a shudder and jerked in surprise when Josh laid a comforting hand on her arm.
Delilah looked from his hand to his face and saw the concern there, the interest. For a moment, she wished they’d met at some other time, in another place. Josh Tanner seemed like every girl’s dream. But despite her research, she was here to rescue her sister. She couldn’t lose sight of that, not for a single minute.
“Besides the bear and the hunter, did you see anyone else in the area?”
Delilah kept her expression bland. She had been raised that it was none of the government’s business what she did, but her family had also been strict adherents to the Ten Commandments. The only exception to “Thou shalt not lie” was when it involved any kind of police or government authority. She couldn’t lie to Josh, but she couldn’t tell the whole truth, either. “Those two pretty much kept my attention.”
The thrift-shop clock ticked loudly while he studied her. She wouldn’t look away.
Finally, he said, “Is there anything at all you can tell me that will help us figure out who this man was? We need to notify his family.”
Delilah straightened her spine and met his eyes. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help you, but I didn’t know him.”
“Did you hear gunfire about the time you found the body?”
“I did, but that’s certainly not unusual out here.”
“Why did you try to hide your tracks?”
A trained investigator lived behind that easy smile, and she’d be a fool to forget it. She attempted a casual shrug. “Habit, I guess. I was raised to fly under the radar, not get involved in things that aren’t my business.” Lame, Delilah. More words wanted to tumble out, so she clamped her mouth shut.
“You know that makes it look like you have something to hide.”
She hated the disappointment in his expression.
“You sure you didn’t know him? Haven’t seen him around anywhere?”
“I’ve never seen him before. Truly. And I have absolutely no idea why a bear attacked him. It doesn’t make any sense.” Given all she was hiding, needing him to believe her on this point wasn’t logical, but there it was.
He nodded once and stood, his large frame taking up way too much space in her tiny camper. He pulled out a business card, wrote something on it before he handed it to her. “My cell number is on the back. If you think of anything, please call me. Day or night. In the meantime
, avoid that area while we trap the bear.”
“I will.” She glanced down at the card, then back up at his face, not sure what else to say.
“Be extra cautious when you’re out doing your research, okay?” He touched a finger to the brim of his official FWC ball cap and said, “Delilah,” in a low tone that curled her toes.
She didn’t draw a full breath until she peeked through the curtains and saw him disappear into the forest.
* * *
Josh headed back the way he’d come, his odd conversation with Delilah running through his mind. Her words had been straightforward enough, but her eyes said there was quite a bit she wasn’t saying. Since she was normally warm and friendly, even a bit flirty on occasion, her response today was way off, and that made his cop antenna twitch.
Given her passionate position on leaving the monkeys alone, if the victim was a researcher with an opposing viewpoint, had there been a professional disagreement she was embarrassed to mention? He couldn’t quite see it, but he couldn’t ignore the connection, either.
By the time he arrived back at the scene, Sanchez was bagging evidence, and the medical examiner was on-site, preparing the body for transport. Hunter had been taking photographs and stepped away when Josh arrived. “Did you find whoever those footprints belonged to?”
“I did. I followed them to a truck, which led me to a camper, which led me to Delilah Paige.” At Hunter’s questioning look, he added, “The monkey researcher we’ve seen at the Corner Café.”
A quick grin flashed over Hunter’s face as he and Sanchez exchanged a look, but then he sobered. “Two monkey researchers in the same place? What was she doing out here?”
“She said she’d come to see the Atwoods, claims she’s a friend of theirs, only they weren’t there. On her way back, she ran across the body. Says she has no idea who he is. Has never seen him before.”
“Why didn’t she call it in?” Sanchez asked.
“I asked the same question. She said when she got back to her camper, she was pretty shaken up.”
